deliverer

Question 1

form

Answer 1

• triplets represent 3 stages of life
• no regular rhyme scheme w no beat= no room for uplifting melodies or regularity
• enjambment creates a stream-of-consciousness effect, showing the speaker’s uneasy flow of thoughts
• divided into contrasting sections= reinforcing the thematic contrast between origin and destination
• “MILWAUKEE AIRPORT, USA”
  = subheading creates sharp spatial and cultural shift
  = breaks poem into 2 contrasting halves: India vs. America
  = abandonment vs. adoption= contrast in geography implies contrast in values, wealth, and perception of worth

Question 2

dehumanisation

Answer 2

• ‘covered in garbage, stuffed in bags’
  = synthetic listening= impersonal dehumanisation imposed by society= harsh consonants (“garbage,” “stuffed,” “bags”) create a violent auditory effect, echoing the brutality of disposal= cumulative detail builds intensity= evoking horror and pity
  = no room for individuality in this ever ending cycle of abandonment based on their gender or race
  = babies have no control of their fate
• ‘one of them was dug up’
  = baby in 3rd person= not valuable enough to belong or have a name
  = ‘dug’= connotation to death and being buried= ironic that the dog finding the baby is more emotional and humane to save it
• ‘sister here is telling my mother’
  = plain diction and conversational tone= impression of an everyday story= makes the horror even more jarring
  = makes the collection of human lives sound like routine logistics, reinforcing the theme of commodification
  = speaker seems detached= reflecting how normalised this horror has become
• “like bone or wood, something to chew”
  = simile reduces a human child to a disposable object
  = personification of the dog’s perspective shift the tone to grotesque realism
  = detached recounting of this moment enhances its psychological impact
  = trauma remembered but also trauma unprocessed
• “Watch body slither out from body”
  = animalistic imagery evokes a reptilian, primal, almost dehumanised act of birth= stripping away sentimentality
  = alliteration and rhythm of repeated ‘b’ sounds (body, baby, heap of others) create a pounding rhythm, mimicking the relentless brutality

Question 3

USA

Answer 3

• “They are American so they know about ceremony / And tradition, about doing things right.”
  = irony and implied criticism as “ceremony” and “doing things right” sound hollow when juxtaposed with the preceding atrocities
  = cultural generalisation highlights a Western sense of superiority or performance of morality
  = suggests Americans focused on appearances and rituals
  = missing or ignoring the deeper trauma involved
  = critique of how adoption may serve Western ideals of morality, while disconnecting from the child’s actual experience
• “Don’t know of her fetish for plucking hair off hands, / Or how her mother tried to bury her.”
  = caesura breaks the rhythm= mirrors emotional gap between the adoptive parents and the child’s reality
  = “fetish” is deeply unsettling as suggests a compulsive, possibly traumatic behaviour
  = juxtaposition of the mundane (plucking hair) with the monstrous (being buried alive) shows how trauma manifests in subtle and unseen ways
• lines foreground the invisible scars of abandonment
  = the adoptive parents are unaware of the emotional damage they’ve inherited
• ends poem on a chilling note of disconnect
  = love, ceremony, and good intentions can’t erase trauma
  = leaves readers with a sense of moral ambiguity and unresolved pain

Question 4

gender

Answer 4

• “Feel for penis or no penis”
  = reduced to just a body rather than a human
  = binary evaluation is delivered with disturbing bluntness
  = gender is the sole criterion for survival
• “Lie down for their men again”
  = no pleasure or emotional connection just an action
  = if they don’t give birth to a boy they must try again
• “Where mothers go to squeeze out life,”
  = reduces birth to a mechanical, painful act= no joy, no celebration= only function
  = euphemistic cruelty of“Squeeze”= implies both urgency and disposability, hinting at the forced, reluctant motherhood under patriarchal systems
  = paints a bleak picture of female suffering and marginalisation, where birth itself becomes a ritual of endurance, not hope= mothers are not nurturers, but vehicles, trapped in a cycle of reproduction and abandonment
• physical setting emphasises the social and emotional isolation of both the child and her birth mother
• viscerally upsetting moments in the poem to expose the objectification and murder of female infants
  The line captures the essence of structural misogyny — women’s bodies are both sites of production and sites of violence.
• “heap of others” strips the newborns of individuality= they are mass casualties of patriarchy.

Question 5

poverty

Answer 5

• “Mother tried to bury them”
  = ‘bury’ contradicts our perception of the role of mother
  = dehumanisation of what poverty does to these people
• “desolate hut / Outside village boundaries”
  = sense of exile, pushing childbirth to the margins of society

Question 6

love

Answer 6

• “But they are crying. / We couldn’t stop crying”
  = anaphora of “crying” emphasises depth of emotion
  = drawing a contrast between earlier emotional detachment and this sudden outpouring
  = juxtaposition as grief here sits uncomfortably against the mechanical, dehumanising narrative in earlier stanzas
  = enjambment reflects overflowing emotion that can no longer be contained= structurally mirroring the release of tears
• “The strangeness of her empty arms”
  = metaphor personifies absence as arms that long to hold what’s missing
  = conveying loss, instinctual maternal yearning, and displacement
  = “strangeness” suggests emotional alienation= even in moments of connection, there’s disorientation

Question 7

overview

Answer 7

• critiques societal attitudes toward gender, specifically the devaluation of female infants in patriarchal cultures
• explores themes of female infanticide, displacement, and commodification of the female body, situating these within the global contexts of adoption and cultural hypocrisy
• unveils the systemic dehumanisation of girls in parts of India, where babies are discarded or killed for being born female
• critiques how women’s bodies are reduced to functions of reproductive vessels or burdens= highlighting their lack of agency in both birth and social structures